The exercise of listening to music as often as not, is a private thing - late night, dark room, the glow from the stereo lights, maybe a bottle of wine and if you're lucky, a fireplace with the embers still glowing red.
Or, you're in that old chevy, eatin' up the road, the singer on the radio keepin' you between the lines, remindin' you that you are not out there alone on that midnight river of asphalt.
That's what I like best about this album, and what I've always liked about the way Mikel Miller sings a song - he makes it an intimate thing. Ditto for the songs he writes. He doesn't shout these songs at you from the loud glare of the showbiz spotlight - he whispers them in your ear, like shared secrets from the shadowy corners of some metaphorical "Last Chance Saloon".
I've seen Miller perform some of these songs in front of large concert audiences, but the effect is about the same - one on one musical conversation with an artist who's not afraid to speak heart to heart with each member of his audience.
In the title track of this album, "The KEY", Miller sings, "And in the fading of the night, I think I've found the key." Answers to big questions are usually illusive things and Miller is always wise enough in his beautifully simple lyrics, to suggest, instead of declare.
That the album is laced with common images which are easy to relate to helps make the songs universally appealing, (although for those compelled to find appropriate "slots" for everything, we could call these songs "country/blues/ballad/storytelling/singer/songwriter/poet/folksongs" - but why would anyone want to?). Choruses such as "Slow Driftin' Song's", "Comin' & goin', Goin' & comin', Back around again", are wonderfully simple and infectiously singable. In "This One's On Me", Miller invites the world to "Put another line upon my face" and there is no doubt that the themes of change, and loss, and ever-spinning circles, add up to a musical journey that is about passage, and about the way that what has gone before, is cherished and preserved in the museum of the human heart.
Add some beautiful sounds from quality back up musicians, including the stunning work of George McConkey on harmonica and you have an album that speaks eloquently the spirit of each and every lost traveler on their own journey to find The KEY....